Post Office Plans Big Job Cuts

By Neal Colgrass, Newser Staff

Posted Mar 20, 2009 7:17 PM CDT

(Newser) – Citing severe losses, the US Postal Service is slashing 1,400 jobs and offering early retirement to 150,000 workers, NPR reports. The post office will also shut down six district offices, but says delivery will not be affected. Hobbled by a 5.2 billion... Read full story »

COMMENTS

Read the comment policy

You need to Log in to Newser to comment. Don't have an account yet? Sign up now!

There are no comments

A snapshot of the day's best news stories.

View Larger Grid

All Today Yesterday Pick a Date

What's Popular Now on Facebook

'Serpent Pastor' Dies of Snake Bite

Miami Face-Eater Identified

NPR (Source Grid »)

New England to lose 2 offices
Boston Globe

Money

recession • USPS • job • post office

More Newser Stories

USPS Halts 600 Urban Closings

On heels of announcement staving off rural closures

(AP) - The USPS is going to halt a plan to close some 600 urban and suburban postal branches, a spokesman announced today. The facilities in many cities serve as neighborhood post offices. The Postal Service announced last year that it was looking at closing up to 252 mail-processing centers and 3,700 post offices, as part of a plan to save some $6.5 billion a year. It began backing off the plan last week , saying it no longer planned to close thousands of rural post offices but would keep them open with shorter hours. More»

Rural Post Offices to Stay Open: USPS

But they'll have shorter operating hours

(AP) - Good news for those living in Very, Very Small Town, USA. Hundreds of rural post offices will indeed remain open, the USPS announced today, albeit with shorter hours. The new plan will save the mail agency half a billion dollars each year while addressing concerns of rural residents most opposed to post office closings, says Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe. More»

USPS Has Dismal Holiday, Loses $3.3B in Quarter

Decline in regular mail more than offsets gift shipping bump

(NEWSER) - The US Postal Service had a jaw-droppingly ugly holiday quarter, losing $3.3 billion despite a better-than-expected surge in gift shipments, the agency announced today. That's $3 billion worse than its figure for the same period in 2010, the AP reports, and at this rate the agency expects to run out of dough by October. The problem is that traditional mail delivery continues to plummet—it fell 6% in the first fiscal quarter, which ended Dec. 31. More»

Post Office to Slow Mail, Kill Next-Day Letter Delivery

Half of USPS mail processing centers to shut down this spring

(NEWSER) - Get ready to wait an extra day for the next DVD of The Wire: The mail is going to slow down. As part of its plan to save $3 billion, the cash-challenged US Postal Service will be closing roughly half of its 500 mail processing centers as soon as next March, a move that could bring new meaning to the term "snail mail," the AP reports. The plan will make next-day delivery of first-class mail a thing of the past, and deal a serious blow to things like time-sensitive magazines, mail-order prescription drugs, and Netflix. More»

How the USPS Deals With Your Awful Penmanship

Neither rain nor sleet nor ... bad handwriting

(NEWSER) - The United States Postal Service has no shortage of public headaches —but the Wall Street Journal takes a look at a quirky problem that's a little more under-the-radar: your bad handwriting. The USPS employs 1,900 clerks who show up for work at one of two "Remote Encoding Centers" and then try to make sense of horrifically unreadable addresses. Their ranks used to be much larger: 32,000 clerks at some 55 RECs. Thanks to technological advances, computers can decode most chicken-scratch. Scanned images of the unreadable ones end up in Salt Lake City or Wichita. More»

NEWS FROM OUR PARTNERS

What is Newser?

Face it: there's too much news. At Newser, we choose the most thought-provoking and entertaining stories from hundreds of US and international sources and reduce them to a headline, picture, and two paragraphs. And we do it 24/7—you can come back morning, noon, night (and in between) for something new that matters. Read less, know more.

Learn more »

Partnering with: Slate

View Newser on the mobile website

Post Office Plans Big Job Cuts

recession • USPS • job • post office

MOST POPULAR STORIES

[ By Views ]

[ By Comments ]

More Newser Stories

USPS Halts 600 Urban Closings

On heels of announcement staving off rural closures

Rural Post Offices to Stay Open: USPS

But they'll have shorter operating hours

USPS Has Dismal Holiday, Loses $3.3B in Quarter

Decline in regular mail more than offsets gift shipping bump

Post Office to Slow Mail, Kill Next-Day Letter Delivery

Half of USPS mail processing centers to shut down this spring

How the USPS Deals With Your Awful Penmanship

Neither rain nor sleet nor ... bad handwriting

About Us

Site

Community

Site Maps

Tools

More News

What is Newser?